http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
HAVE you noticed? Decency has become an obscene word among our cultural pacesetters. New
York's mayor proposes to appoint a decency commission to avoid future spectacles like obscene
works of "art'' being displayed at public expense, and the knowing snicker.

Vulgarity is no longer something to be avoided; it is the art we show, the sitcoms we watch, the
radio we listen to, the rap we hear, the air we breathe, the trash we talk, and soon enough the
thoughts we think.

The other night I tuned in to find out how our minor-league ball club here in Little Rock, the
Arkansas Travelers, were doing when an amusing commercial for a popular beer suddenly turned
off-color. Right here in River City. I wondered if anybody else would notice, let alone object.

In a curious reversal of class structure, it is not our elites -- once the refuge of the fine arts and high
culture, if those terms still have any meaning -- who object to the vulgarization of American life. On
the contrary, they are leading it. See the latest exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, or just take a
look at the heroin-chic ads in our glossier magazines.

It's been called the proletarianization of the culture, but that's an insult to the proles. Ibn Khaldun,
the great historian of the Arabs, may have been the first to note centuries ago how civilizations take
root, grow decadent and are then swamped by the barbarians who conquer them. But today's
barbarians are within. These barbarians R us, and, saddest phenomenon of all, we may no longer
notice, let alone object.

Even now, those of us who remember that arts and entertainment weren't always so base, and may
even object on occasion to the routine vulgarity of daily American life, can feel like King Canute
ordering the waves to stop. There may be no stopping this whole, muddy process till it has run its
course. But the least we can do is notice the silt it leaves behind. And object. Loudly.

The other day, the MSNBC Web page carried an almost routine item noting that Yahoo!, the
Internet provider, is now selling hard-core pornography. (''Yahoo! gets into the porn business/Portal
starts selling adult videos online'' -- MSNBC) Ho hum. Just another item in the business news.

But this was a major player in the new, Internetted economy -- a company whose Web pages are
seen by some 185 million people a month. And its online store was offering thousands of hard-core
videos and DVDs -- and had been doing so, a spokesman said, "for more than two years.'' The
implication was clear: This had been going on for two years, so why the fuss now? This wasn't
news, it was just the (a)moral climate of our time.

But wasn't there a time when pornography was sold only by shadowy, nameless little people who
preyed on other, sad little people? Wasn't there a time when it would have been unthinkable, or at
least Not Done, for a publicly held corporation to trade in porno?

Wasn't there a time when such a company's officers, directors, investors and advertisers (who
probably provide 90 percent of Yahoo!'s revenues) would have been ashamed? Or at least
concerned about what the public might think?

Because you can tell where a society is headed by the level of its public discourse, or even private
conversation. There was a time when many Americans were, if not shocked, then deeply
disappointed by the obscenity-laced language a president of the United States used on the
Watergate tapes. Because we understood that it reflected the inner man. We understood, even if we
didn't spell out all the implications, that the way we speak and think shapes how we act, and how
the next generation will speak, act and think -- or just grunt.

Some of us still understand that entertainment isn't just entertainment; it's a model and reflection of
ourselves. Maybe a lot of us do. Because after this story hit the news and people started to
complain, Yahoo! changed its policy. It stopped making excuses and cleaned up its act.

Last week, Yahoo! announced that it was going to drop all pornographic products from its Web
pages -- auctions, shopping, classifieds, all of them. And it would stop accepting the banner
advertisements it has run for that kind of thing.

Why? To quote Jeff Mallett, its president and chief operating officer, "We consistently strive to act
responsibly and constantly evaluate our policies based on what our users tell us.'' And Yahoo! got
told.